{"id":69325,"date":"2026-09-09T07:50:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/69325\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T07:50:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:50:30","slug":"meet-jelena-ostapenko-the-fiery-latvian-tennis-star-making-headlines-over-us-open-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/69325\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Jelena Ostapenko, the fiery Latvian tennis star making headlines over US Open drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Latvian tennis star Jelena Ostapenko and her Taiwanese partner, Hsieh Su-wei, missed out on the US Open<\/a> women\u2019s doubles semi-finals after losing to Elise Mertens and Diana Shnaider on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Leading up to the match, Ostapenko was at \u2060the centre of another \u2060heated US Open exchange on Monday, confronting an opposing coach after reaching the women\u2019s doubles quarter-finals with Hsieh.<\/p>\n

\"JelenaJelena Ostapenko returns the ball to Tatjana Maria of Germany during the first round of the US Open tennis championships in New York on September 1. Photo: AP Photo<\/p>\n

The fourth seeds beat Australian-Taiwanese pair Maya \u200cJoint and Chan Hao-ching 6-4, 6-4, but tempers flared after Ostapenko took exception to the behaviour of their opponents\u2019 coach.<\/p>\n

Hsieh had approached the umpire during a changeover and Ostapenko pointed towards the opposing team\u2019s coach, urging the official to intervene. The \u2060Latvian said the coach had been clapping and shouting after their \u200cmistakes and sarcastically praising their shots in Chinese, which Hsieh translated for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do this because they \u200cknow they cannot beat us,\u201d Ostapenko told the umpire, calling \u2060the behaviour \u201cvery \u2060disrespectful\u201d and asking for the presence of a Chinese translator.<\/p>\n

After the umpire agreed \u200cto deal with the situation, the pair returned to the court and turned up the \u200cheat \u200cto seal the straight-sets win. Ostapenko then celebrated by roaring towards \u200cthe opposing box while Hsieh and Chan did not shake hands \u2060at the end of the fiery encounter.<\/p>\n

\"TaylorTaylor Townsend (right) greets Jelena Ostapenko during their women\u2019s singles second-round match of the 2025 US Open. Photo: Getty Images\/AFP<\/p>\n

Ostapenko, the 2017 French Open \u2060singles champion, has been involved in several on-court disputes. At last year\u2019s US Open, she accused Taylor Townsend of having \u201cno \u200cclass\u201d and \u201cno education\u201d in \u200ca verbal confrontation with the American. Ostapenko later apologised, saying her choice of words during the exchange had been misunderstood because English was not her first language.<\/p>\n

\"JelenaJelena Ostapenko has been involved in several on-court disputes. Photo: @jelena.ostapenko\/Instagram<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s everything you need to know about Jelena Ostapenko.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latvian tennis star Jelena Ostapenko and her Taiwanese partner, Hsieh Su-wei, missed out on the US Open women\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1976,26783,217,25057,745,207,26093,3123,26784,408,26785,17769,220,1729,859,1037],"class_list":["post-69325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-french-open","tag-afp","tag-arturs-karasausks","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-chan-hao-ching","tag-elise-mertens","tag-french-open","tag-hsieh-su-wei","tag-jelena-ostapenko","tag-latvian","tag-maya-joint","tag-metalurh-zaporizhzhia","tag-new-york-times","tag-roland-garros","tag-stuttgart-open","tag-taylor-townsend","tag-u-s-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}